Your Time's Run Out
by rythmteck
Summary: A series of 1000 word or less character studies based on Dead Man's Chest. Please read and enjoy.


**Author's Note:** well, it's that time again. I've seen DMC enough times to really start working through characters. I admit to missing my little vignettes when I ran out of ideas for those based on CotBP. I hope you all enough reading them as much as I love writing them.

This first vignette is from Elizabeth's POV. The girl is clearly riddled with guilt in Tía Dalma's shack. My thinking on this was likely influenced by the writer's commentary. ;)

**Disclaimer: **_they _aren't mine, the _quotes_ aren't mine, but I will lay claim to the punctuation. Everything else pretty much belongs to the Mouse and I'm a slave to the inspiration. Darn plot bunnies. Eh, more a case of plot fleas in this case.

* * *

-Thunk- 

The shack is silent except for the repetitive sound of Will's blade meeting wood. It's too hard to think of words to say, though my mind finds plenty with which to taunt and rebuke me.

"_Pirate."_ A superior mocking smile.

-Thunk-

"_Where's Jack?"_ Dark eyes with holding painful knowledge.

"_He elected to stay behind to give us a chance."_

-Thunk-

_Liar, _my guilt whispers.

"_Against the cold…"_

"_We are very much alike, you and I…I and you."_

-Thunk-

"…_and the sorrow."_

I want to scream. Scream until these ghosts are banished from my mind, until my head is my own again. Until Will's accusing, angry silence find another target. Does he doubt me so easily after all we've gone through to simply be together?

"_My place is here…between you and Jack."_

"_As is mine."_

In battle we have always been unified, our minds one. My hand itches with the feel of a rifle's barrel being pressed into my palm. How is it possible that we lost that accord in a matter of minutes, in that brief pause between battles?

"_A marriage interrupted, or fate intervenes? You're making a great effort to ensure Jack Sparrow's freedom."_

-Thunk-

"_These aren't going to Jack."_ How insulted I was by the thought. I may have been willing to stand between Jack and the law…

"_Oh really? To ensure Mr. Turner's freedom then."_

…but Will has always come first.

-Thunk-

The past keeps interrupting, keeps we few survivors isolated from each other. Though I strain to make peace with myself, my dizzy thoughts never cease their whirling, moving from memories of the past to the guilt of the present.

No! I did the only thing I could to save all our lives. To save _Will's_ life. "_Captain Sparrow…I'm here to find the man I love."_

"_I'm deeply flattered son, but my first and only love is the sea."_

"_Meaning William Turner, Captain Sparrow."_

-Thunk-

Jack wouldn't have given up. He _never_ would have given up. It is only their grief that keeps them all from seeing that as clearly as I did. His belief that there was one more dodge, one more _negotiation_, one last chance for salvation would have doomed us all. None of the men would have been able to do what I did. None of them would have been able to turn away their captain.

"_Abandon ship."_

"_Jack…the _Pearl…"

-Thunk-

"_She's only a ship, mate."_

Liar.

"_A keel, and a hull, and a deck, and sails… That's what a ship **needs**. But what a ship **is**, what the _Black Pearl **_really_**_is, is freedom."_

If he could give up other men, give up his ship, how long would it have been before he would have given up all of us? Desperation drove him to surrender things that he otherwise would have never let go of.

In desperation, what could _I_ give up?

-Thunk-

"_It's after you, not the ship."_

A friend?

-Thunk-

"_Are you the man I've read about or not?"_

A childhood hero?

"_You bloody coward."_

My illusions?

-Thunk-

Where was the captain who would willingly go down with his ship? They never made a fuss in the stories.

Stories…

The kraken should only be a story, but there'd been nothing unreal about the strength of those tentacles or the screams of distressed timber.

There'd been nothing fantastical about the terrible silence that descended as the _Pearl_'_s_ masts slipped beneath the surface. There'd been no smiling Jack magically in our midst to explain away the rumors of his death.

"_I always knew you were a good man."_

-Thunk-

I wasn't wrong! My _actions_ weren't wrong. I gave him his dignity. They all think he willingly set out to save us.

"_Truth?"_ A sunny beach and ugly wounds.

-Thunk-

"_What would you do? What would any of you do?"_ A dark cabin and ugly conscience.

"_Today is the day you will always remember as the day that you…"_

"_Against the sorrow…"_

Oh god, what have I done?


End file.
